There is a double belief that causes health authorities to hold back from vigorously promoting healthy behaviours. The first is linked to the idea that there is a trade oV between the quantity and the quality of life. Why increase the individual length of life if it is at the price of the quality of the years lived. But what do we mean by the quality of the years lived? Happiness or well being?...

BACKGROUND Population ageing is expected to lead to strong increases in the number of persons with one or more disabilities, which may result in substantial declines in the quality of life. To reduce the burden of disability and to prevent concomitant declines in the quality of life, one of the first steps is to establish which diseases contribute most to the burden. Therefore, this paper aims ...

BACKGROUND Panel data are often used to estimate key measures of public health, such as years lived with and without disability. Panel surveys commonly measure disability at intervals of one or two years, and occasionally more than two. It is likely that these intervals often include unreported changes in functional status. Unreported changes may bias estimates of disability transition probabil...

BACKGROUND The disability adjusted life year (DALY) is a composite measure of disease burden that includes both morbidity and mortality, and is relevant to conditions such as epilepsy that can limit productive functioning. The 2010 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study introduced a number of new methods and definitions, including a prevalence-based approach and revised disability weights to calc...

Background and purpose: Laryngeal cancers are associated with high rates of mortality and disability. No effective screening test is proven for this disease, so, the best way seems to be controlling the disease by identifying and eliminating individual predisposing factors. The aim of this study was to pave the way for a better understanding of the risk factors and factors affecting the type an...

BACKGROUND Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic and often disabling disease. In 2005, 62% of the MS patients in Sweden aged 16-65 years were on disability pension. The objective of this study is to investigate whether the presence of common co-morbidities increase MS patients' risk for disability pension. METHODS This population-based cohort study included 4 519 MS patients and 4 972 174 non-...

BACKGROUND Microvascular and macrovascular abnormalities are frequently found on noninvasive tests performed in older adults. Their prognostic implications on disability and life expectancy have not been collectively assessed. METHODS This prospective study included 2,452 adults (mean age: 79.5 years) with available measures of microvascular (brain, retina, kidney) and macrovascular abnormali...